While We Are on the Subject: Aliens and the Conspiracy

The key question is, of course, ``Where are they?'' Ex hypothesi, the
Earth has been putting out anomalous radio noise for 2,500 years; one
would think someone would have come to investigate, if only they were able.

In fact, the Conspiracy has made contact with some of Them - namely
the Martians. The evidence of the Face and Pyramids on Mars is, when combined
with Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clarke, Heinlein, Bradbury, Niven and many
others, quite compelling. Evidently there are two species of Martians,
one autareonous and vaguely resmbling insects, the other humans
genetically modified to fit the environment. No doubt the Viking results,
and the Mariner maps, were faked by the Conspiracy. The canals are
underground, to reduce evaporation losses. Whether this useful technique
was introduced to Mars from the Middle East or vice versa is unclear.
First contact was probably made well before +1000. (Whether Venus is also
a la Burroughs & Bradbury, with the purported hideous conditions being
more Conspiracy disinformation, is currently unknown.)

Still, where are the interstellar aliens? A trivial difference of
a million years in when another planet got its first tool-using intelligences
and their Cthulhus could have arrived a long time ago.

It is certain that the Conspiracy was not started by aliens.

In fact, They have not come, and are not coming. Humans are at least the
technological, if not the intellectual, pinnacle of the available galaxy.
We may even be the first space-faring species in the galaxy.

An extension of this has been suggested. The Universal
Unpleasantness Conjecture (pronounced: ``Uuk!'') states that humans are the
best the universe has been able to produce. Technically, intellectually,
morally or aesthetically, everyone else is worse. This is, in the words
of Dr. Pangloss, the best of all possible worlds. (Voltaire's suggestion in
Micromegas that everyone else is better than us is thus obviously satire on
the atrocious trolls who are our neighbors.) Evidently the UUC has found
support among the Conspiracy, for as Russell says, ``If I buy a crate of
oranges, and discover that the first layer is entirely rotten, it is not
rational to suppose that the rest is of surpassing excellence to make up for
it.''